Gov. Tim Pawlenty Tuesday talked at length about the value his proposed constitutional amendment to limit state spending to just what the state has already taken in, but acknowledged it will never pass the Legislature.

When asked if he had made any personal effort to get it on the ballot, he said of the Legislature: "They won't take it up… .They pretty much declared it DOA."

He said rather than having state economists and budget officials project the state's spending and revenue, the state should limit spending to the actual revenue the state had received in the previous two-year cycle.

In the current forecast process, wise elders come out and project the state's deficit or surplus and "sometimes they're right, sometimes they're wrong, sometimes they're horribly wrong," he said.

"I don't think that's a very good way to run a railroad....A better measure of what the forecast, what the revenues will be is what they are now. It's not perfect but it would be a more reliable and stable and conservative measure of revenue projections other than what we have now. I think it's a substantial improvement. The truth of the matter is, they ain't gonna pass it. I know that. They know that. But I think it's a good idea," he said.

"If it's such a good idea, why didn't your budgets fit within that measurement?" he was asked.

His response:

"Well, you could go back and say: Why didn't we have school choice in the 1960s? You know, why didn't we have consumer market health care in the 1970s? Why did we have public employees bus drivers who got post-retiree health benefits for the rest of their lives after driving a bus for 12 years? …So, we play by the rules that we have. Just because we didn't do something in the past doesn't mean you can't propose a reform for the future. Your logic would be, ah, we can't propose school reform because we didn't propose it eight years ago."

And then he delivered the scowl pictured above.

Thanks to TPT's Mary LaHammer for the photo.